Ballad of Birmingham by Dudley Randal Literary Appreciation Essay

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Ballad of Birmingham

BY DUDLEY RANDALL

(On the bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama, 1963)

“Mother dear, may I go downtown

Instead of out to play,

And march the streets of Birmingham

In a Freedom March today?”

“No, baby, no, you may not go,

For the dogs are fierce and wild,

And clubs and hoses, guns and jails

Aren’t good for a little child.”

“But, mother, I won’t be alone.

Other children will go with me,

And march the streets of Birmingham

To make our country free.”

“No, baby, no, you may not go,

For I fear those guns will fire.

But you may go to church instead

And sing in the children’s choir.”

She has combed and brushed her night-dark hair,

And bathed rose petal sweet,

And drawn white gloves on her small brown hands,

And white shoes on her feet.

The mother smiled to know her child

Was in the sacred place,

But that smile was the last smile

To come upon her face.

For when she heard the explosion,

Her eyes grew wet and wild.

She raced through the streets of Birmingham

Calling for her child.

She clawed through bits of glass and brick,

Then lifted out a shoe.

“O, here’s the shoe my baby wore,

But, baby, where are you?”

Dudley Randall, “Ballad of Birmingham” from Cities Burning. Copyright © 1968 by Dudley Randall. Reprinted with the permission of the Estate of Dudley Randall.

Source: Cities Burning (Broadside Press, 1968)    

    First of all, I really enjoyed Ballad of Birmingham by Dudley Randal. The poet is very good at bringing the emotions of the readers through every line and stanza. I could sense the sad emotion of losing someone. The description of the setting of the place described is very clear so that my imagination feels more vivid. The diction is quite easy to read and Randal’s writing style that took realism and present simplicity. Then, Randall uses several literary devices in 'The Ballad of Birmingham'. This includes but is not limited to enjambment, caesura, and allusions. The latter is one of the most important techniques in poetry. By linking the response to the 1963 bombing at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. This poem directly to a real historical event, the poet is remembering that event in a powerful way. Since the reader knows what will happen if the child goes to "the streets of Birmingham", there is a lot of foreshadowing and anticipation of the violent outcome.

    This poem is about an unnamed girl who is the victim of a bomb at Birmingham 16th Street Baptist Church. She asks his mother at the beginning of the poem if she can go to town and march with the Freedom March. The mother said no and preferred that her daughter go to church and join the children's choir. The daughter obeyed her mother's words and in the end, this led to her pathetic death. Moreover, it is mentioned “the church” in the fourth stanza becomes “bits of glass and brick”, this sentence shows that the church that the daughter attended has been destroyed. It was impossible for anyone to survive an accident like that. This makes me very goosebumps and sad at the same time. 

    Based on the social context, the poem wants to say about some aspects of the civil rights struggle in Alabama and the events that took place there. “Ballad of Birmingham” requires the reader's knowledge of the 1963 bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham to fully appreciate the nuances of the story it tells. But without that knowledge, Randall's poetry tells a simpler, if equally tragic, story. A woman tries to protect her daughter from a threatening world and learns that no place is safe from the violence going on around her. At its most basic level, “Ballad of Birmingham” pulls us through the heartbreaking experience of a tragic loss and exposes us to the powerlessness of such victimization. 

    At the end of the story, I feel sorry for the victim (the mother) the mother refuses to let her daughter go, saying that she is afraid the police will shoot her. She then suggests that her daughter goes to church instead of the Freedom March, saying that the girl can spend her time singing in the children's choir. If she had not taken her to church at that time, her daughter would still be alive and free from the bomb accident. However, we cannot escape destiny.